The Smudges on the Window Sill
by Yulliah
Summary: Draco pays a visit to a completely defenceless Harry Potter.


**Another short Drarry fic. Hope you'll enjoy it!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything related!**

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"Potter, how lovely to see you," I sneered, trying not to notice the smudge of dried blood on his left cheek.

He's magically bound, his general rucked up appearance the silent witness of his struggles against his restraints.

The room is bare, and I'm not exactly sure for whose benefit that is. His presence cackling in the air like a wild and powerful animal. But he's not an animal, even if the outraged look in his eyes remind me of one of the caged creatures in Hagrid's pasture. Potter scares me in his complete surrender to his anger and fury.

Some saviour he is.

"Malfoy!" The spittle that accompanies the words hit my trousers, even though I'm standing at least ten feet away from him. He shows his teeth with a sound that makes me flinch. His lip is split. That last round must've been some fight, even if I could only hear the sounds, not see anything. Then again, he never did seem to know when to quit.

"Come to take your turn with me? I doubt you could do much damage, you coward!"

I draw my wand and take a step closer. He barely responds, but in that split second, I could see his left eye twitch, and his body moved ever so slightly away from me. He's trying not to show it. He's trying to keep up that unbreakable imagery of the Boy-Who-Lived, Dumbledore's unbeatable weapon.

He's scared shitless of the thought that he's defenceless against my wrath.

I touch my wand to the corner of his mouth, and with a soft incantation I watch the skin close until there's nothing left of the cut but the smeared blood on his lip.

I stay in front of him and squat down slowly, looking him in the eye, trying to make a connection.

"You want some water?"

"What's in it? Poison? Potions? Veritaserum?"

He tries to escape my gaze, but I'm too close. He couldn't avoid me unless he deliberately stares at the floor between us. Like he'd ever stoop down to that level of submissive defeat in front of me.

"Just water, Potter, I'll drink it first if you don't trust me."

He looks at me wearily before he narrows his eyes and scrunches his nose. "How can I be sure you haven't taken any kind of antidote?"

"You can't, you'll have to take my word for it. In the end it's your choice: Death by thirst, or death by Poison. Most Poisons are preferable to the alternative."

I shift my weight until I'm kneeling, sitting back on my calves and ankles. I watch him, fascinated, as he tries to make the most complicated decision he'll have today. And I know he'll have to make it again tomorrow.

He slowly nods and follows the movement of my hand as I Transfigure a button on my Robe into a glass, and fill it with an Aguamenti. I lift the glass to my mouth and take a long refreshing swallow.

I offer it to him and slowly let him take small sips, not wanting him to choke.

"Where are Mione and Ron?" he asks and I close my eyes.

"Please, Malfoy. Are they alive? What did your father do to them?"

I take a deep breath and open my eyes, staring straight into his bright green ones.

"They are fine, Potter, chained to the wall in the Dungeon. They are fine."

I almost choke around the lie, but I don't know what else to say. Why would I tell him they are long dead? What's the bloody point? He's still here, isn't he? He won't understand that I had nothing to do with it.

"Why am I not dead yet?" he asks, closing his eyes, keeping my safe from their accusing glare for a few short seconds. He looks so broken, yet ready for a fight to the death.

No, not ready, not ready by any stretch of the imagination, with his pale complexion and his bony cheeks. He could hardly stand on his feet if he had to, but he'd fight. I know he would. He'd fight until his last breath, and he's ready to die fighting. Expecting it even.

"We're all trying very hard to keep you alive, Potter."

Confusion flashes through his eyes and I can see his mind rattling for answers, trying to figure it all out.

"Why?"

"We're not done with you, we're not giving up on your mind yet."

"You won't get in, Snape taught me. There's no way you or that son of a bitch Voldemort are going to break through my barriers!"

That same fury as earlier brightens his green eyes to an almost fluorescent shade of acid green. I wonder if it's his magic, being bound like his body, but trying to get out.

I can't blame him. I'd be mad with anger if I were going through what he's going through.

"Where's the bastard anyway? Hmmm? Thought he'd drop by to try some of his usual taunts."

I take another deep breath and hold it in as long as I can, past the point where my lungs become uncomfortable with the lack of oxygen. The pressure in my nose almost makes me sneeze and I breathe out.

"I've got to go, Potter, hang in there."

With a few short strides I walk out the door and listen as the Wards on his room flick back into place.

"Mr Malfoy, a moment please?"

Healer Greenberg gestures me into the observation room and I watch through the shimmering wall as Harry retreats back into himself. After a moment the door opens and an orderly walks in with a Healer. They remove the Magical straightjacket and check his vitals before leaving the room.

Harry gets up and moves to the Window, pressing his somewhat dirty fingers against the shiny sill, smudging it, before wiping it clean with the sleeve of his plain white shirt.

I can't hear him from here, but I know what he's muttering. '_Dirty, dirty, dirty.'_ It's his mantra when he doesn't know I'm in the room.

"Mr Malfoy, I watched your visit from here, and I couldn't help but overhear," Healer Greenberg starts, but I interrupt him.

"You mean to say you eavesdropped."

"Yes, well, I noticed you telling him you've not given up on his mind yet."

"Stranger things have happened." I look away from the man and watch Harry rocking back and forth.

"Mr Malfoy, Harry is extremely schizophrenic, has no conception of reality and seems to be stuck in a constant loop of traumatic events. He's unreachable. We've tried everything, but his Occlumency is too strong, and due to his paranoia, we cannot get him to trust us enough to let down his barriers."

"Yeah, well, he thinks you're all Death Eaters, doesn't he? Of course he won't trust you."

"We are aware, Mr Malfoy. However, knowing doesn't change the fact that we have no way to treat him."

I sit down on a wooden chair, leaning my forehead against the shimmering wall.

"He almost seems normal when I'm in the room with him. He's starting to trust me, you know? He's trusted me before." I swallow thickly, knowing that my words are nothing but make belief and hopeful imagination.

"I'm not telling you to give up on him, however I _am _telling you to prepare for the possibility he's lost to us forever."

"Have you even figured out why he is the way he is in the past few months?" I ask, because I've hardly spoken to the Healers since we brought him in. I leave that up to aunt Andromeda and Molly Weasley. They are the mother hens. I'm just the delusional boyfriend.

Or maybe the delusional boyfriend would be him.

He's been here for six months, and before that he was with me at Grimmauld place for a year, where we all hoped he'd just snap out of it eventually.

"There's no way to tell. It might be something You-Know-Who did during their battle, or maybe it's a pre-existing condition that was aggravated through trauma. There's also the possibility that it's just trauma itself."

Healer Greenberg sits down calmly on another chair and folds his hands in his lap. I can feel his eyes on me.

I don't get it. I hate the bloody war, and I hate that he had to be such a big part of it.

It seems like those who've made the biggest sacrifices, have had no rewards to reap afterwards.

Professor Snape was tortured and killed, Harry went mental.

And the sacrifices that were all for nothing. Ronald Weasley saving Hermione Granger from the killing Curse by jumping in front of her, for her to die a second later by an Expulso on her body as she leaped over her boyfriend in an, at that moment, completely inappropriate attempt to mourn him.

Blaise finally breaking with his family, joining the side of the Light in the Battle for Hogwarts. Cursed blind by my cousin Andromeda Tonks, who confused him for his older brother Zachary, who'd taken the Dark Mark weeks earlier. Incapacitated and afraid, he'd tried to hide. Unfortunately he'd tried to hide in a corridor with Fenrir Greyback. I don't think I'll ever be able to think of my old friend without seeing him lying on the floor like that. Ripped to bloody pieces.

But the worst sight I'll have burnt on my retina, is the expression on my father's face as he realised it was me who hit him with that Necrotic hex. It took less than twenty seconds for him to die, and I feel guilty for the fact that I enjoyed those twenty seconds.

Mother turned on me in that moment, and I couldn't lift my Wand to defend myself, but Harry had. Oh, how Harry had.

He came out of nowhere, pushing me away and engaging in a duel with the woman who'd done nothing more than give birth to me. I was her link to the Malfoy fortune, nothing more, nothing less.

I once thought she loved me, that she would do anything for me.

I was wrong.

I'd felt the air go cold and the grass under my feet had turned a reddish brown, and I turned to see what was happening.

There he was, Voldemort, surrounded by Dementors, going straight for the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry must have felt their presence and cocked a smile at my mother.

"I don't have time for this," he said, and cast a Curse that made her body split open into dozens of deep cuts, and she fell on top of my father's body.

I don't know what happened next. Something hit me and my lights went out in a split second. But I've been told by others who were there. How Harry looked confident and every bit the Savior he was, is and will always be in my eyes.

To the outside they seemed to just be staring at each other for what felt like ages, but I know it must have been a battle of minds, will and strength.

Voldemort lost, and when Harry softly and calmly cast Expelliarmus, the former Dark Lord fell to the ground, seeming to be nothing more than a man. Nothing imposing or frightening about him left to fear.

When I wake up a week after the Battle, Harry had been like this. Catatonic to a point where he had to be restrained for make him eat or drink or rest.

I didn't want him here in St Mungo's. I didn't want to turn him to the Janus Thickey ward, to share a hallway with the Longbottoms and professor Lockhart, but Molly had been right. I tried to help him, and I couldn't do it on my own. I needed help.

I'm not stuffing him away though.

I'm not giving up on him.

Even if I weren't head over heels in love with him since the month he spent as a prisoner in my parent's Manor, I'd not let him go.

He's owed more than that.

By all of us.

But mostly by me.

Because _I _owe him more than that.

I owe him everything.

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